part0011

I n September of 1967, Dr. John Henry Altshuler was working as a pathologist at the Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. He had heard about UFO sightings in that state’s San Luis Valley. So one day, out of curiosity, he stayed overnight in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument park to see if he could observe anything.

About 2:00–3:00 a.m., I saw three very bright, white lights moving together slowly below the Sangre de Cristo mountain tops. I knew there were no roads up on those rugged mountains, so the lights could not be cars. They were definitely not the illusion of stars moving. Those lights were below the tops of the mountain range and moved at a slow, steady pace. At one point, I thought they were coming toward me because the lights got bigger. Then suddenly, they shot upward and disappeared. 1

Altshuler was caught by police in the park, and when they learned that he was a medical hematologist, they took him to see a strangely mutilated horse that had been found ten days earlier not far away. After helping them out in their investigation of the horse, he took leave of the police officers in a state of great anxiety.

I begged everyone not to reveal my name or where I was from. I was unbelievably frightened. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I was so afraid I would be discovered, discredited, fired, no longer would have credibility in the medical community. My experience in 1967 was so overwhelming to me, I denied the experience to everyone, even to myself. It was a matter of self-preservation, trying to give myself an insurance policy in the medical profession. 2

Unexpectedly, Dr. Altshuler had fallen into the danger of being publicly connected with socially condemned subject matter. His reaction may seem extreme. But ridicule and ostracism are very effective punishments, and everyone knows how willing people are to use them. Altshuler was visualizing the imminent destruction of the medical career that he had worked for years to achieve. The same fear, operating in various scientific and academic professions, may have a strong effect on the publication and study of all types of anomalous observational data.

Stephen Braude, a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, pointed out how the fear of negative social labeling affects the study of psychical phenomena. He observed that parapsychologists tend to avoid the study of large-scale psychokinesis (PK), in which heavy objects such as sofas and tables are reported to move and levitate. After listing some theoretical and ideological reasons for this avoidance, he added:

Others, I believe, are simply embarrassed by the extreme nature of many of the reported phenomena, and fear that their interest in them will be judged to be uncritical, weak-minded, or unscientific. And that fear is not without foundation. Historically, as a matter of fact, serious investigators of large-scale PK have been treated very badly by fellow scientists. 3

People naturally tend to ridicule things that don’t fit into their familiar systems of thought. But unfortunately, one effect of ridicule is to reinforce the limits such systems impose. By discouraging the careful study of forbidden topics, ridicule restricts people’s opportunity to learn about these topics. For example, large-scale PK may be reality or nonsense, but as long as people are afraid to carefully investigate it, it will remain a disreputable unknown.

Another effect of ridicule is that it allows absurd or irresponsible versions of a subject to flourish. There are always unscrupulous people who are willing to distort the truth to fool others or to make a fast buck. Unlike scholars with good reputations to maintain, such people do not tend to be discouraged by ridicule. Thus ridicule has the perverse effect of encouraging ridiculous stories while inhibiting serious scholarship.

For many years, the subject of UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, has been widely regarded as disreputable by the general public. This could partially account for Dr. Altshuler’s fear of being known as a UFO witness. But what reaction might Altshuler expect from his scientifically trained colleagues and from scientific researchers dedicated to the objective study of natural phenomena? Would these people also be likely to respond to his story with intolerance?

It turns out that the role of science in the story of UFOs is surprisingly complex. Scientists have not simply dismissed the study of UFOs as a fringe subject. In a number of instances, reputable scientists have strongly argued that UFOs involve technology and even physical principles unknown to science. Government-funded scientific studies of UFOs have been made, scientific UFO conferences have been held, and scientific journals have been founded to provide a forum for discussing UFO evidence. But ridicule nonetheless plays a very powerful role in the position of scientists on the UFO issue.

Between 1967 and 1969, the eminent physicist Edward U. Condon headed a scientific study of UFOs under the auspices of the University of Colorado. The study was funded by a government grant of $523,000, and it produced a final report of well over 500 pages. As I will show in Chapter 3 , this report—commonly known as the Condon Report—contains strong evidence suggesting that some UFOs may be vehicles exhibiting an unknown technology. However, Condon concluded the report by saying that UFO studies will probably not contribute anything to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

It is instructive to see how this conclusion was communicated to the scientific community. I will begin with an editorial in the prestigious journal Science , written by Hudson Hoagland in 1969, just after the publication of the Condon Report. Hoagland was at that time President Emeritus of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and he was a member of the Board of Directors of the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In his editorial, Hoagland compared UFO reports to claims by spiritualistic mediums to produce ectoplasm and movements of objects. He also told an anecdote about how he and the magician Harry Houdini had exposed a bogus medium. Having established this background, Hoagland then made the following remarks about UFOs:

The basic difficulty inherent in any investigation of phenomena such as those of psychic research or of UFO’s is that it is impossible for science to ever prove a universal negative. There will be cases which remain unexplained because of lack of data, lack of repeatability, false reporting, wishful thinking, deluded observers, rumors, lies, and fraud. A residue of unexplained cases is not a justification for continuing an investigation after overwhelming evidence has disposed of hypotheses of supernormality, such as beings from outer space or communications from the dead. Unexplained cases are simply unexplained. They can never constitute evidence for any hypothesis. Science deals with probabilities, and the Condon investigation adds massive additional weight to the already overwhelming improbability of visits by UFO’s guided by intelligent beings. The Condon report rightly points out that further investigations of UFO’s will be wasteful. In time we may expect that UFO visitors from outer space will be forgotten, just as ectoplasm as evidence for communication with the dead is now forgotten. We may anticipate, however, that many present believers will continue to believe for their own psychological reasons, which have nothing to do with science and rules of evidence. 4

Hoagland was convinced that all reports of unidentified flying objects are products of defective senses, lies, or delusions. His argument was that these negative assessments have been demonstrated in so many cases that we can conclude they apply in all cases. However, it is unfair to ask for proof of this since “science cannot prove a universal negative.”

Whether this conclusion is valid or not can only be decided by examining the UFO evidence in detail. But Hoagland’s tactic of tying in UFO studies with the antics of bogus spirit mediums is clearly a deliberate strategy of ridicule. His statement that believers will continue to believe for psychological reasons is a way of excluding studies of UFOs from the domain of science: If you study these things you are not a scientist. You are a true believer, and your statements convey irrational beliefs rather than scientific hypotheses.

Edward Condon also lumped in UFO studies with spiritualism and psychical research as pseudoscience, or false science. Immediately after completing the Condon Report, he made the following remarks in an article titled “UFOs I Have Loved and Lost,” published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists :

Flying saucers and astrology are not the only pseudo-sciences which have a considerable following among us. There used to be spiritualism, there continues to be extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, and a host of others. . . .

In ancient times, the future was foretold in many ways that have gone out of favor, such as by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals, or basing omens on the study of the flight of flocks of birds. . . . Before you smile, bear in mind that these views have never really had as much scientific study as have the UFO reports. Perhaps we need a National Magic Agency to make a large and expensive study of all these matters, including the future scientific study of UFOs, if any.

Where the corruption of children’s minds is at stake, I do not believe in freedom of the press or freedom of speech. In my view, publishers who publish or teachers who teach any of the pseudo-sciences as established truth should, on being found guilty, be publicly horsewhipped and forever banned from further activity in these usually honorable professions. 5

Of course, Condon was right in saying that something should not be taught as established truth unless it has been solidly demonstrated. But in the realm of science, opinions will vary as to what is true, and scientific progress is hindered when many different possibilities cannot be freely and openly discussed. Condon was apparently confident enough of his ability to recognize pseudoscience to be convinced that its rigid exclusion would not impede the free pursuit of knowledge.

To understand why UFO investigations are rejected as false science in such strong terms, we must consider how the UFO phenomenon appears to scientists from their own theoretical perspective. To get some insight into this, I will examine some points made by William Markowitz in an article on UFOs published in Science in 1967, and reprinted in 1980 in a book entitled The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life .

For Markowitz and many other scientists, the starting point for doubt is theoretical. The problem with UFOs is that in many reported cases they don’t strike people as mindless natural phenomena. Rather, they seem to be intelligently controlled vehicles not built by human beings. If such vehicles exist, then they must come from somewhere. Science cannot accept anything ethereal, higher-dimensional, or supernatural, and so the vehicles must originate as solid, three-dimensional objects. We don’t see facilities for building such things on the earth, and the other planets in the solar system are thought to be uninhabited. This implies that if the UFOs are real vehicles, then they must be visitors from distant stars. That this is so is called the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).

In his article, Markowitz identified himself as an expert on interstellar spaceflight, and he discussed various schemes for accomplishing this. All of these schemes were based on the principle of the rocket, in which matter is expelled from the rear of a craft, and the craft is pushed forward by the resulting reaction. He concluded that interstellar travel is not possible using these methods, and therefore UFOs could not be extraterrestrial craft.

He pointed out that published UFO reports often describe objects 5 to 100 meters in diameter that land and lift off. Arguing that these objects would have to fly on the basis of rocket thrust, he said, “If nuclear energy is used to generate thrust, then searing of the ground from temperatures of 85,000°C should result, and nuclear decay products equivalent in quantity to those produced by the detonation of an atomic bomb should be detected.” 6 From this he concluded that the reported objects could not be extraterrestrial spacecraft, unless the laws of physics are wrong. Yet he said, “I do not take issue with reports of sightings and will not try to explain them away. I agree that unidentified objects exist.” 7

He brought up the possibility of reconciling UFO reports with the extraterrestrial hypothesis by assigning “various magic properties to extraterrestrial beings.” 8 These include powers of teleportation and antigravity. However, he rejected these out of hand. He also considered “semi-magic hypotheses” that are based on known physical laws but include impractical features such as 100% efficient conversion of matter to energy. These he also rejected.

Markowitz concluded that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is untenable because practical travel between the stars is physically impossible. In contrast, at the AAAS symposium on UFOs in 1969, the astronomer Carl Sagan held out the remote possibility of developing some method of interstellar travel. But he suggested that the chances are vanishingly small that another civilization in this galaxy will launch an expedition that happens to reach the earth. 9

He argued that out of 10 10 “interesting places” in this galaxy, at most 10 6 will be solar systems with civilizations that send out interstellar expeditions. That means that for each interesting place to have a good chance of being visited in a given time period, at least 10,000 expeditions per civilization must go out on the average in that period. For example, for the earth to receive one visit per century on the average, an expedition rate of 10,000 expeditions per civilization per century would be necessary. This means 100 expeditions per year in each civilization. Given the great difficulties involved with interstellar travel, Sagan concluded that such expedition rates are not plausible, and therefore UFOs are not likely to be interstellar visitors.

Interestingly enough, Sagan raised the question of why people are so attached to the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs. He asked why people don’t propose that UFOs are such things as projections of the collective unconscious, time travelers, visitors from another dimension, or the halos of angels. 10

As we shall see, people have considered such hypotheses. But for conservative scientists they are all in the same crackpot category as psychical phenomena. The leaders of the scientific community are naturally conservative in outlook, and they are limited to considering hypotheses that seem plausible in the context of accepted physical principles. The idea that people are seeing vehicles built by nonhuman intelligence seems to fly in the face of these principles, and thus the views of Hoagland and Condon on UFOs are naturally attractive to many scientists.

Contrary to Hoagland’s prediction, UFOs have apparently not been forgotten by scientifically inclined people in the years since 1969. Although the scientific community generally rejects the subject of UFOs as a serious topic of discussion in its formal publications, many scientists seem to take the subject seriously on an individual basis.

For example, in July of 1979, the magazine Industrial Research/ Development published an opinion poll on the attitudes of “1200 scientists and engineers in all fields of research and development.” 11 In response to the question, “Do you believe that UFOs exist?,” 61% responded that they probably or definitely exist, and 28% said they probably or definitely do not exist. Researchers younger than 26 were more than twice as likely to believe in the existence of UFOs than were those older than 65, and there was a continuous shift in belief percentages between these two age limits.

As far as individual sightings are concerned, 8% said they had seen a UFO, and 10% said that perhaps they had seen one. Also, 40% said they believe UFOs originate in “outer space,” 2% thought they originate in the U.S.A., and less than 1% thought they are a creation of communist countries. Over 25% thought UFOs are natural phenomena. Scientists are also actively involved in investigating UFOs, although again, this is done outside of the official institutions of science. In some cases, they carry out such investigations individually, and in other cases they work through UFO research organizations. These organizations are sometimes structured like scientific associations, although they have no standing in the scientific community. An example is MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. In 1989, this organization had an Advisory Board of Consultants with 96 members. These included 65 people with Ph.D.’s, mostly in the natural sciences, and 16 people with M.D.’s. 12

One reason for this continuing interest is that credible people, including scientists and engineers, have reported many UFO sightings. To illustrate this, I will begin with a sighting reported by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto. Tombaugh elaborated on his experience in a letter dated September 10, 1957, to a UFO investigator named Richard Hall:

Regarding the solidity of the phenomenon I saw: My wife thought she saw a faint connecting glow across the structure. The illuminated rectangles I saw did maintain an exact fixed position with respect to each other, which would tend to support the impression of solidity. I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because some similarity to it should have appeared many times. I do a great deal of observing (both telescopic and unaided eye) in the backyard and nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since. 13

This letter was included in The UFO Evidence , an extensive collection of UFO sighting reports that was edited by Hall and published in 1964 by an organization known as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). Here is another example from this document of a UFO sighting by an astronomer:

On May 20, 1950, between 12:15 and 12:20 p.m., Dr. Seymour L. Hess, a meteorologist, astronomer, and an expert on planetary atmospheres, observed a bright, at least partially spherical object in the sky from the grounds of the Lowell Observatory. According to his account of the incident, which he wrote within one hour of the sighting, the object was definitely neither a bird nor an airplane, as it had no wings or propellers. Although it appeared to be very bright against the sky, as it passed between Hess and a small cumulus cloud in the Northwest its color appeared dark. Based on the object’s elevation and angular diameter as he perceived it through 4-power binoculars, Hess calculated its size to be approximately 3 to 5 feet. Judging from the movement of the clouds, which were drifting at right angles to the motion of the object, he estimated that the object must have been moving at about 100 mph and possibly as fast as 200 mph. However, he neither saw nor heard any sign of an engine. Dr. Hess was head of the Department of Meteorology at Florida State University as of 1964. 14

It is perhaps significant that neither of these sightings was made during the course of professional astronomical observations. The Condon Report contained a statement by Carl Sagan and five other scientists that “no unidentified objects other than those of an astronomical nature have ever been observed during routine astronomical studies, in spite of the large number of observing hours which have been devoted to the sky.” They pointed out that the Mount Palomar Sky Atlas contains 5,000 plates with a large field of view, the Harvard Meteor Project of 1954–58 included 3,300 hours of observation, and the Smithsonian Visual Prairie Network included 2,500 hours. Nonetheless, “Not a single unidentified object has been reported as appearing on any of these plates or been sighted visually in all these observations.” 15

One response to Sagan and his colleagues was given by astrophysicist Thornton Page, who pointed out that “the astronomical telescopes in use have almost no chance of photographing a UFO passing through the telescope field.” 16 However, he went on to say that the Prairie Network covered 65 per cent of the sky for bright objects over an area of some 440,000 square miles in the Midwest. It should have been able to pick up UFOs, but didn’t. 17

A possible explanation for this was given by the astronomer Franklin Roach, who had spent over three decades studying the airglow in the night sky. He observed that his photometric records were not routinely examined for UBOs, or unidentified bright objects. In fact, such objects would not be expected to appear in the records because starlike light sources were deliberately “underdrawn” and thereby omitted.

During the Colorado Project, Frederick Ayer supervised the detailed study of one night of observations at Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii in which the analysts were instructed not to underdraw any deflections at all. All starlike deflections were then compared with the positions of known stars and planets. Somewhat to our surprise, on two of the records near midnight there were unmistakable deflections not due to known astronomical objects. 18

Roach concluded that it is important to distinguish carefully between a lack of reports and a lack of systematic search for anomalous phenomena. He also noted that his records showed that the UBOs were not known objects, but they gave no indication of what they really were. (Although he didn’t mention meteors, I presume that he considered this obvious possibility.)

The Condon Report cited a study of over 40 astronomers that was contained in Blue Book Report No. 8 of December 31, 1952. It seems that 5 made UFO sightings—a percentage said to be higher than in the population as a whole. The author of this section of the Condon Report remarked, “Perhaps this is to be expected, since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies. On the other hand, they will not likely be fooled by balloons, aircraft, and similar objects, as may be the general populace.” 19 He then commented on some discussions that he had with the astronomers:

I took the time to talk rather seriously with a few of them, and to acquaint them with the fact that some of the sightings were truly puzzling and not at all easily explainable. Their interest was almost immediately aroused, indicating that their general lethargy is due to lack of information on the subject. And certainly another contributing factor to their desire not to talk about these things is their overwhelming fear of publicity. 20

So astronomers do sight UFOs, even though it is said that no evidence for UFOs shows up in any astronomical studies. Could fear of publicity be inducing astronomers to avoid reporting UFO observations and to avoid studying or drawing attention to observations that are reported? One begins to wonder when one reads how UFO investigator Jacques Vallee first became interested in the subject of UFOs:

I became seriously interested in 1961, when I saw French astronomers erase a magnetic tape on which our satellite-tracking team had recorded eleven data points on an unknown flying object which was not an airplane, a balloon, or a known orbiting craft. “People would laugh at us if we reported this!” was the answer I was given at the time. Better forget the whole thing. Let’s not bring ridicule to the observatory. 21

Vallee was working as a professional astronomer at the time, and later he became a computer scientist and, among other engagements, directed a research group working under contract with the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States. His experience at the observatory encouraged him to view scientific research from a very radical perspective, and it started him on a career of UFO research that resulted in many influential books on this subject.

In spite of a tendency for data suppression and underreporting, sightings by responsible individuals do add up, and as they are publicized or transmitted by word of mouth, they contribute to an undercurrent of interest in the subject. Here are two additional reports by engineers that appeared in The UFO Evidence:

(1) While on an evening walk in mid-October of 1954, Major A. B. Cox, graduate of Yale University, member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and member of the Society of American Engineers, observed a large, grayish, disc-shaped object in the sky above his farm in Cherry Valley, New York. In a letter to NICAP’s Assistant Director of correspondence, Richard Hall, dated December 28, 1955, Cox described the unusual flying patterns of the object, which he estimated to be about 35 feet in diameter and five to six feet thick. It moved like a wheel sliding sideways, but without rotating. At one point, the object suddenly stopped and then continued flying upwards at approximately right angles to its previous course. This was curious to Cox as an engineer, since the turn was shorter and more rapid than he thought possible for any airplane. 22

(2) A well-attested UFO sighting occurred on April 24, 1949, at about 10:30 a.m. on the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. Charles B. Moore, an aerologist and graduate engineer balloonist, along with four enlisted personnel from the Navy White Sands Proving Ground, saw a gleaming white, ellipsoid object while doing work for the Office of Naval Research. Using an ML-47 theodolite including a 25-power telescope, they were tracking weather balloons when they spotted the gleaming object, which subtended an angle of about .02 degrees and was about 2½ times longer than it was wide. (A theodolite is a device for accurately measuring the horizontal and vertical direction of an object sighted through a telescope.) With their naked eyes as well as with the telescope, they viewed the unidentified object for approximately one minute, after which time it disappeared from sight as it suddenly moved up from 25 degrees above the horizon to 29 degrees.

Moore launched another balloon fifteen minutes later to evaluate the wind conditions. This balloon burst after reaching 93,000 feet and traveling only 13 miles in 88 minutes, providing positive proof that the object could not have been a balloon moving at such a rapid, angular speed below 90,000 feet. That day Moore and his group identified every airplane that flew over the launching site by appearance and engine noise. Nothing passed overhead which bore any resemblance to the white, gleaming object they had seen earlier. 23

The sighting at White Sands Proving Ground is typical of a whole category of reports emanating from engineers and technical people connected with military research. One such person is Dr. Elmer Green, of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, who informed me personally of his experiences when he was working as a physicist for the Naval Ordinance Test Center at China Lake, California, in the decade from 1947 to 1957. In 1954 or 1955, he was chairman of the Optical Systems Working Group (OSWG), a subsection of the Inter-Range Instrumentation Group (IRIG). This was an organization of professional scientists and engineers, both civilian and military, who were engaged in recording data on weapons tests at several military bases. These included tests of rockets, guided missiles, bombs, and aircraft. OSWG was concerned specifically with metric photography, in which high-speed tracking cameras and photo-theodolites were used to determine the trajectories of rockets and other flying objects. Much of this equipment was custom-made, and it all met the highest professional standards.

In his position, Green heard frequently about incidents in which UFOs flew into camera range during weapons testing and were photographed. He heard about good-quality films that had been made of UFOs, and he personally saw black and white still photos of UFOs that were made by people in his group. He was aware of some 40 to 50 professional people who had some connection with UFO sightings made during weapons testing.

In one case at White Sands, a V2 rocket was about to be fired. Two objects that were two to three feet in diameter came down, circled around the V2 several times, and went back up, vanishing into the sky. The camera crew used up all their film on the UFOs, and so the V2 flight was canceled while they reloaded their cameras.

Green himself made a UFO sighting in the presence of Jack Clemente, who at one time was the photographic officer of the Naval Ordnance Test Center at China Lake. The two men were expecting the arrival of an AJ bomber, which they saw coming in at about 800 feet. As the airplane flew over, they saw an object about 16 feet in diameter flying beneath it at about 400 feet. The object seemed to be a structured, mechanical craft. It had a semicircular forward section marked with what looked like lines of rivets, and a smaller, semicircular back section colored amber like an artist’s triangle. In the blink of an eye, the object flipped up to the wing of the plane. It remained there, pacing the plane, for a few seconds, and then it flew away at great speed, vanishing from sight in 2.5–3 seconds. On the basis of his experience with rockets, Green estimated that it accelerated at 10 to 20 g’s. The object made no sound and it did not show up on radar (although other UFOs have done so). However, it was photographed, and Jack Clemente wrote a report on the incident.

Clemente later asked to see a copy of his report and the accompanying pictures. But he was told that no trace of such a report could be found in the local base files. He told Green that all films and photographs of UFOs disappeared and were presumably sent to Washington.

I asked Green if he had ever been ordered to keep UFO information secret. He answered that although he had a top secret clearance, he was never told to keep quiet about UFO incidents. He explained that such incidents were simply not discussed by military authorities. There was no need to order secrecy about phenomena that simply did not exist.

Green noted that although UFOs looked mechanical, they seemed to violate the laws of physics. Although they often exceeded the speed of sound, they never produced sonic booms. Their maneuvers reminded him of the movements of a spot of light projected on a wall by a flashlight, and he speculated that they might be structures that were somehow projected into our space-time continuum.

He said that the people in his group experienced many more UFO incidents in the early part of the decade starting in 1947 than in the later part. He noted that in his early days at China Lake he would regularly see the flashes from A-bomb air bursts at the nearby atomic testing range in Nevada, and he remarked that some people speculated on a connection between UFO activity and the atomic testing. He speculated that the reason for the apparent UFO cover-up was that government authorities didn’t want to admit their inability to understand UFOs or to prevent them from flying with impunity through our skies.

This is an amazing story, and it again brings us back to questions involving credibility, ridicule, and suppression of information. If the story is true, then at least 40 to 50 professional scientists had definite knowledge of UFOs in the early 1950s. Why is it, then, that UFOs are not openly acknowledged by scientists and leaders of society? The story introduces a new element, governmental secrecy, which I will discuss in Chapter 3 . The systematic elimination of “hard” evidence by government authorities, combined with fear of ridicule and loss of career, may explain why none of these scientists ever made strong public presentations of their UFO experiences, either singly or in a group.

Gerard Kuiper of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona disagreed with the idea that scientists can be swayed by social pressure. At a meeting of the Arizona Academy of Science on April 29, 1967, he said: “I should correct a statement that has been made that scientists have shied away from UFO reports for fear of ridicule. As a practicing scientist, I want to state categorically that this is nonsense.” He pointed out that a scientist “selects his area of investigation not because of pressures but because he sees the possibility of making some significant scientific advance.” 24

Undoubtedly, Kuiper is partially correct. Some scientists may not make anomalous observations involving UFOs, and they may sincerely believe that if they did make such observations, they would openly report them. Others may actually observe UFOs, and then suppress their observations when brought face to face with the fear of losing their careers. This, in turn, reinforces the feeling of the first group that no serious UFO observations are being made.

Some professional scientists have openly engaged in UFO investigations. However, their stories also involve the issues of credibility and data suppression. To illustrate this, I will first discuss the ideas of J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer and long-time consultant to the Air Force on UFOs. Over the years, Hynek’s views on UFOs changed greatly, and in the course of this he made a number of seemingly contradictory statements that created doubt and confusion about UFOs for other scientists.

In an article on UFOs, William Markowitz noted a letter to Science in which Hynek declared that although scientists are said to never report UFOs, actually “some of the very best, most coherent reports have come from scientifically trained people.” 25 Then Markowitz quoted a statement by Hynek in the Encyclopedia Britannica, in which he referred to “the failure of continuous and extensive surveillance by trained observers” to produce UFO sightings. 26 Markowitz felt that these apparently contradictory statements called into question the reliability of UFO data.

In 1954, over 200 reports over the whole world concerned landings of objects, many with occupants. Of these, about 51 percent were observed by more than one person. In fact, in all these sightings at least 624 persons were involved, and only 98 of these people were alone. In 18 multiple-witness cases, some witnesses were not aware that anyone else had seen the same thing at the same time and place. In 13 cases, there were more than 10 witnesses. How do we deal with reports like these? One fact is clear: we cannot shrug them off. 27

Powers was making a rather strong claim. Were there really over 100 cases in the United States in 1954 where at least two people saw a UFO land? According to Markowitz, Hynek informed him in 1966 that he had no reliable reports of UFO landings and lift-offs, and no records of cases in which a reliable witness visited an extraterrestrial craft or talked with an occupant. 28 This statement also filled Markowitz with doubts.

I would be neither a good reporter nor a good scientist were I deliberately to reject data. There are now on record some 1,500 reports of close encounters, about half of which involve reported craft occupants. Reports of occupants have been with us for years but there are only a few in the Air Force files; generally Project Bluebook personnel summarily, and without investigation, consigned such reports to the “psychological” or crackpot category. 29

One might suggest that Hynek regarded these reports as unreliable, even though he didn’t say so when he mentioned them before members of the AAAS. But in 1972 Hynek wrote of his meeting with Betty and Barney Hill, two people who claimed to have spoken with aliens on board an extraterrestrial craft. He spoke of their “very apparent sincerity” and said that “there was no question of their normalcy and sanity.” 30 This meeting with the Hills occurred in about 1966, close to the time of his reported statement to Markowitz.

The apparent contradictions in Hynek’s statements can perhaps be attributed to the gradual evolution of his ideas on UFOs and his caution in making public statements that would damage his credibility. Hynek was a professor of astronomy, and he was chairman of the astronomy department of Northwestern University for many years. He was also a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on UFOs for about 20 years beginning in 1948, and he later served as director of a civilian UFO research organization called CUFOS, or Center for UFO Studies.

Hynek’s views on UFOs changed greatly over the years. He began as an avowed skeptic who thought that UFOs were an utterly ridiculous craze or fad that would quickly subside. But by 1979 he was giving serious credence to ideas that would seem outrageous to conservative physical scientists such as Hoagland or Markowitz. In his introduction to Raymond Fowler’s book The Andreasson Affair, Hynek wrote:

Here we have “creatures of light” who find walls no obstacle to free passage into rooms and who find no difficulty in exerting uncanny control over the witnesses’ minds. If this represents an advanced technology, then it must incorporate the paranormal just as our own incorporates transistors and computers. Somehow, “they” have mastered the puzzle of mind over matter. 31

One might ask why a professor of astronomy would publish a statement like this. Was he saying what the “creatures of light” might be if they exist, while maintaining a healthy skepticism about whether they exist or not? Perhaps, but he also said in his introduction that the book would sorely challenge skeptics who had the courage to take an honest look at it, and he declared that it did not show the slightest evidence of hoax or contrivance.

Our common sense recoils at the very idea of humanoids and leads to much banter and ridicule and jokes about little green men. They tend to throw the whole UFO concept into disrepute. Maybe UFOs could really exist, we say, but humanoids? And if these are truly figments of our imagination, then so must be the ordinary UFOs. But these are backed by so many reputable witnesses that we cannot accept them as simple misperceptions. Are then, all of these reporters of UFOs truly sick? . . .

In 1966, however, the ideas that Hynek was willing to publicly discuss were much less radical. For example, at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on UFOs on April 5, 1966, Hynek was asked whether or not UFOs might be piloted by extraterrestrial beings. He answered:

I have not seen any evidence to confirm this, nor have I known any competent scientist who has, or believes that any kind of extraterrestrial intelligence is involved. However, the possibility should be kept open as a possible hypothesis. . . . But certainly there is no real evidence of intelligent behavior of hardwares. 33

When asked if he was looking for an explanation of UFOs based on natural phenomena, Hynek answered, “Yes.” 34 It appears from these statements that in 1966 Hynek did not think that UFOs were intelligently controlled at all. Yet he said in his 1972 book that on Aug. 1, 1965, a series of remarkable events occurred at U.S. Air Force facilities near Cheyenne, Wyoming. He stated that he was informed of these events at the time through his connection with Project Blue Book. Here are the reports that came in:

1:30 a.m. — Captain Snelling, of the U.S. Air Force command post near Cheyenne, Wyoming, called to say that 15 to 20 phone calls had been received at the local radio station about a large circular object emitting several colors but no sound, sighted over the city. Two officers and one airman controller at the base reported that after being sighted directly over base operations, the object had begun to move rapidly to the northeast.

4:40 a.m. — Captain Howell, Air Force Command Post, called Dayton and Defense Intelligence Agency to report that a Strategic Air Command Team at Site H-2 at 3:00 a.m. reported a white oval UFO directly overhead. Later Strategic Air Command Post passed the following: Francis E. Warren Air Force Base reports (Site B-4, 3:17 a.m.) — A UFO 90 miles east of Cheyenne at a high rate of speed and descending— oval and white with white lines on its sides and a flashing red light in its center, moving east; reported to have landed 10 miles east of the site.

3:40 a.m. — G Site reported one UFO at 70° azimuth and one at 120°. Three now came from the east, stacked vertically, passed through the other two, with all five heading west. 35

Hynek noted with astonishment that when he asked Major Quintanilla, the officer in charge of Blue Book, what was being done to investigate these reports, Quintanilla replied that the sightings were nothing but stars. That seems unlikely, but what were they? The orderly behavior of the objects and their tendency to fly over military installations does suggest intelligent guidance. Oval shapes with flashing red lights in the center are likewise suggestive of intelligent design.

In his book published in 1972, Hynek certainly allowed the reader to interpret this report he received in 1965 as evidence of an unknown intelligence. Yet less than a year after receiving that report, Hynek told Congress that there is “no real evidence of intelligent behavior of hardwares.”

I have discussed the development of Hynek’s ideas at some length to illustrate both the extreme character of the reported UFO phenomena and the effect that this had on a conservative scientist who was trying to study and understand these phenomena. Hynek’s need to protect his credibility apparently led him to make contradictory statements that reduced the credibility of UFO evidence in general. At the same time, his increasing willingness to give serious consideration to the more extreme UFO phenomena is impressive. Hynek showed every sign of being a careful and critical thinker, and so one might wonder what moved him to eventually adopt such a radical position.

Although in the mid 1960s Hynek played down the idea of intelligent control of UFOs, one prominent scientist named James McDonald strongly advocated it. McDonald was a senior physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and a professor in the meteorology department at the University of Arizona. In a public statement prepared for newspaper editors, he gave the following summary of his views:

An intensive analysis of hundreds of outstanding UFO reports, and personal interviews with dozens of key witnesses in important cases, have led me to the conclusion that the UFO problem is one of exceedingly great scientific importance. Instead of deserving the description of “nonsense problem,” which it has had during twenty years of official mishandling, it warrants the attention of science, press, and public, not just within the United States but throughout the world, as a serious problem of first-order significance. . . .

McDonald’s article contains summaries of 18 case studies of UFO sightings, as well as a discussion of the history of the UFO controversy and the role played in it by science, the U.S. Government, and the military. In this regard, he disagreed with the widespread idea that the government is deliberately covering up information on UFOs. Rather, he concluded that there is “a grand foulup, accomplished by people of very limited scientific competence, confronted by a messy and rather uncomfortable problem.” 37 Hynek also tended to favor this foul-up idea. 38

One topic that McDonald discussed at some length is the scientific debunking of UFOs. In particular, he mentioned the work of Dr. Donald Menzel, an astronomer who was at one time the director of the Harvard College Observatory and who wrote books dismissing UFOs largely as misperceptions of astronomical or meteorological phenomena.

McDonald discussed how Menzel explained the UFO sighting of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh mentioned above. Menzel’s idea was that Tombaugh saw the lighted windows of a house reflected by a ripple in the boundary of an atmospheric haze layer. As this ripple progressed with a wavelike motion, the reflected house would have seemed to move like a flying saucer. 39 McDonald’s comments on this are scathing:

Now this might go down with a layman, but to anyone who is at all familiar with the physics of reflection and particularly with the properties of the atmosphere, . . . the suggestion that there are “haze layers” with sufficiently strong refractive index gradients to yield visible reflections of window lights is simply absurd. But, in Menzel’s explanations, light reflections off of atmospheric haze layers are indeed a sight to behold. This, I say, I simply do not understand. 40

Although McDonald’s article was prepared only for newspaper editors and was not published, he did write an article on UFOs in the journal Astronautics and Aeronautics . 41 This is a detailed discussion of an episode in July of 1957 in which an Air Force RB-47, manned by six officers, was followed by a luminous, highly maneuverable object for about 1.5 hours as it flew from Mississippi through Louisiana and Texas, and into Oklahoma (see pages 212–13 ). This case is significant because it involved simultaneous observation of the object by human vision, by radar from the ground and from the airplane, and by electronic counter-measures (ECM) equipment on the airplane.

Unfortunately, the same issue that published this article also contained an obituary notice for McDonald, who died in the desert near Tucson on June 13, 1971, apparently by suicide. The obituary notice included the following statement, which brings us back to the theme of ridicule, science, and UFOs:

The history of the UFO problem has been full of unusual and tragic events. Men of highest scientific achievements have seen themselves involved in strongly opposing views. Others have become victims of vitriolic attacks or, perhaps worse, of ridicule. McDonald was one of them. 42

In more recent years, the tendency of the scientific community to disdain the subject of UFOs has largely continued. However, in the United States the Society for Scientific Exploration was founded in 1982 by 13 professors of science at major universities. The express purpose of this society is to promote the study of anomalous phenomena that scientists tend to neglect, and the society publishes a refereed technical journal entitled Journal of Scientific Exploration. This journal has published quite a number of articles on UFOs, and it also publishes articles on paranormal phenomena.

One article published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration described in great detail how in 1977 NASA responded to a recommendation from President Carter’s science advisor to form a panel of inquiry on UFOs. The author, Dr. Richard Henry, gave some insights into the reasons for NASA’s rejection of this recommendation. The main reason was fear of ridicule. As Henry put it, UFOs are a tar baby, and “A scientist who touches the tar baby once, as I have, runs the risk of getting deeper and deeper in goo. I don’t have a strong stomach for it.” 43 Another important reason was that UFO studies would take already scarce funds away from other important scientific projects.

In France, a fully funded, civilian scientific UFO study group was created by the government in 1977. This is called GEPAN (Groupe d’Etudes des Phīnomznes Aerospatiaux Non-Identifees). GEPAN produced a five-volume, 500-page report, which was summarized as follows by the sociologist Dr. Ronald Westrum in 1978:

The bulk of the work was devoted to eleven cases of high credibility and high strangeness . . . [which] were studied in great detail; only two proved to have a conventional explanation. In the other nine, it appeared that the distance between the witnesses and the objects was less than 250 meters. Of the five volumes of the report, three were entirely devoted to analysis of these eleven cases, all except one of which was pre-1978. The earliest was 1966. Two of the cases were humanoid sightings.

The analysis and investigation was carried out by a four-person team in each case; the team included a psychologist, who separately carried out a psychological examination relevant to the evaluation of the testimony of the witnesses. The care with which distances, angles, and psychological factors were evaluated makes the bulk of the Condon Report seem very poor by comparison. In many cases, the investigations were textbook models of how such investigations should be carried out. 44

The ratio of cases with no conventional explanation to the total number of cases will depend on the screening process used to arrive at the initial set of cases. If cases are accepted without discrimination, then this ratio may be very low, and this may be used to argue that the “unexplained residue” of sightings is insignificant. For example, Project Blue Book listed 10,147 sightings in the period from 1947 through 1965, and of these it listed 646 sightings, or about 6%, as unexplained. In his testimony before Congress on April 5, 1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown dismissed this small residue by saying, in effect, that given the imperfections in the reports, you can’t expect to explain everything:

The remaining 646 reported sightings are those in which the information available does not provide an adequate basis for analysis, or for which the information suggests a hypothesis but the object or phenomenon explaining it cannot be proven to have been here or taken place at that time. 45

In France, UFO reports were also handled by the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), the French equivalent of NASA. In 1989, J. J. Velasco reported at a conference of the Society for Scientific Exploration that 38% of the UFO cases studied by CNES remained unidentified as natural phenomena. Thus CNES apparently used stricter screening procedures than the U.S. Air Force, and the cases studied by GEPAN were even more tightly screened.

In nine of the eleven cases, the conclusion was that the witnesses had witnessed a material phenomenon that could not be explained as a natural phenomenon or a human device. One of the conclusions of the total report is that behind the overall phenomenon there is a “flying machine whose modes of sustenance and propulsion are beyond our knowledge.” 46

In summary, the aim of this chapter has been to show that the UFO question has engaged the serious attention of quite a few reputable scientists, and it has been discussed in official scientific forums. This suggests that it cannot be simply dismissed as nonsense or pseudo-science. At the same time, many reported UFO phenomena seem to be incompatible with established scientific principles, and others are so bizarre that they violate the norms of common sense in modern society. Even though some reputable scientists have argued that reports of such phenomena should be seriously studied, others have denounced them in very strong terms. This, combined with people’s natural tendency to reject bizarre stories, has surrounded the subject of UFOs with an aura of ridicule that makes serious study of the subject difficult.